Benjamin Stein

Ben was the founder and CTO of Mobile Commons before it was acquired by Upland Software. He is one of the leading pioneers shaping how organizations successfully use mobile for healthcare, advocacy, fundraising, and organizing.

It’s finally happening. Today, the FCC votes on whether the internet belongs to you, or to the cable companies.

You’ve already done a phenomenal job of encouraging the FCC to adopt rules that will keep the internet free, fair, and thriving—nearly 200,000 calls to Congress have been placed from Tumblr alone, hundreds of thousands more from a diverse coalition of partners, and 4 million total comments have been submitted directly to the FCC. You raised you voice and, holy cow, your government is actually listening. By all accounts, Chairman Wheeler is prepared to do the right thing—a politically brave thing—and enact firm net neutrality rules under Title II of the Communications Act.

If this happens, it’s you guys who deserve the credit for making it happen. So let’s make sure it happens. If you haven’t called your representative yet, call your representative. If you’ve already called your representative, call them again.

And with your help, we’ll all have an historic milestone to celebrate: An internet whose freedom is secure for generations to come.

What’s really weird (and actually a little disconcerting, given our innate understanding of object permanence), is that the photos from Ditmas Ave and the photos from Argyle Rd were taken on completely different days. So if you “turn” up the street to get a closer look, I disappear. Like Keyser Söze.

“Out of all the TOS I have dealt with in 20 years, Facebook’s are the most intrusive. To be granted rights to track an individual’s movements, and thus the people that would be with those individuals, and to potentially commercially exploit without permission all pictures posted on Facebook without specific consent, is breath-taking.”

TL; DR: I returned it after 2 days for a Nexus 9 and couldn’t be happier.

Note: this is mostly a blog post for @aaronwolfe so we don’t have to actually discuss this in person.

Having spent 2 full days with each device, I’ll give my early thoughts on both in the style of Brent Rose. Normally I buy (or drink) everything Brent tells me to, which is why I went iPad in the first place, but in this comparison, I think he was pretty far off base.

DisplayI agree with Brent here. It’s pretty much a toss up. The Nexus has a little bit of lightbleed around the edges. Doesn’t bother me too much, but it’s there. Slight edge iPad, but overall a tie. They are both gorgeous.

DesignAgain, this one is pretty close. They both look great. I went with the white Nexus over the black one after reading complaints about cheap feeling manufacturing on the black one, specifically a slight bubble when you press the back. I have to say, the constuction of the white Nexus is excellent. Doesn’t feel cheap at all, and no bubble in the back. Personally, I prefer it over the iPad. I found the iPad’s sharp metallic edges to be unconfortable. Reminded me of the switch from iPhone 3G to iPhone 4: the sharp metallic corners leave lines on your hands. The Nexus is definitely more confortable. Touch ID is nice on the iPad, but double tap to turn on the Nexus screen is also nice. Slight edge Nexus here for comfort.

(After using the Droid Turbo’s wave-your-hand-in-front-to-see-active-display-notifiations, everything else, including these tablets, seems absurd. It’s one of the most how-did-i-possible-live-without-this-before features I’ve experienced in a long time. Like using a mouse that doesn’t scroll)

AudioNot even close. Nexus has amazing sounding front facing stereo speakers. The iPad has speakers on bottom, or worse, on the side when watching a movie in landscape. It’s like listening to headphones when one earphone breaks. I found it unusable for watching movies without headphones on. Oh, and when you turn the volume up, the entire iPad vibrates. Like a lot. Like a whole lot. You can’t actually listen to music and read at the same time. Nexus=great. iPad=dealbreaker.

CameraI didn’t try the camera on either and never will.

SoftwareSince it’s not my phone and I just use it for movies and reading, I thought I could get by with iOS. I was so wrong. I forgot how awful iOS is. The put-30-apps-into-a-folder-called-crapple-and-move-it-to-the-last-page thing? It’s ridiculous. Apple Maps? Ugh. Safari? Mail?

And logging into new apps, which you do like 50 times in a row with a new tablet, is a personal hell on iOS. It takes 12 taps, some searching, and a bunch of double clicks to copy-paste credentials from LastPass. Compare that to one-click autofill every single app on Android. Boom.

Speaking of software, this was my first time using Android on a tablet. I found it pretty good but not earth shattering. On a phone, it’s earth shattering. Google Now, Aviate, etc. It literally blows my mind every day. On a tablet that I use in the evening? Well, it’s fine. It gets out of the way, which is mostly what I want.

Oh, and it runs Lollipop too. Lollipop is pretty enough, but nothing too exciting for me. I was already using ART. Most of my apps already upgraded to Material Design in KitKat. Motorola’s active display notifications really are fantastic, so the new Lollipop notifications aren’t a huge leap. I think if you’re coming from 4.3 or a non-Motorola device, it’s a pretty sweet upgrade. For me, meh.

PerformanceI didn’t notice a difference.

ConclusionI am loving the Nexus 9. Between iOS, the mono speaker on one side, and the vibrating speaker, the iPad Air 2 was a complete nonstarter.

Internet access is a utility. A commodity that should get better and faster and cheaper over time. Anyone who says otherwise is lying for money.

Last night I upgraded from the MotoX (2013) to the Droid Turbo (metallic black, 32GB).

Here are my early observations:

The screen is really, really nice. Bright and gorgeous

I think I like the larger size (5.2" vs 4.7"). Jury is still out.

The camera is definitely improved, but still no where close to iPhone 5 or 6. Despite the 21 megapixels (meaningless marketing stat), the super slow shutter speed rates it as “usable.” A huge step up from “worthless” on the MotoX, but still not great.

TomTom doesn’t work. The app just doesn’t support the higher resolution. This sucks, as it’s one of my favorite (and most expensive!) apps. It’s even listed as compatible in the Play Store. No workaround at the moment, and this is my first experience with Android market fragmentation.

Radio Paradise app doesn’t play music :(

The bells and whistles, like “don’t turn off the screen when I’m looking at it” and “silence calls by waving over the phone” are all really neat

Definitely feels faster than the MotoX. Doesn’t blow me away and nothing close to iOS, but it’s definitely an improvement

I preferred on screen buttons to capacitive. Not sure how much I care.

I’ll update when I know more about the battery

My wife upgraded to iOS 8 this week too, so I’ve been playing with that. It still doesn’t hold a candle to Android. Google definitely skated to where the puck was going.

Do other media companies subscribe to Wikipedia in the same fashion? How about it Gawker, NY Times, Vox, Wired, ESPN, WSJ, New York Magazine, Vice, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post? Even $500/month is a drop in the bucket compared to your monthly animated GIF hosting bill and I know your writers use Wikipedia as much as I do. Come on, grab that company credit card and subscribe.

(Long story short: The FCC is about to make a critical decision as to whether or not internet service providers have to treat all traffic equally. If they choose wrong, then the internet where anyone could start a website for any reason at all, the internet that’s been so momentous, funny, weird, and surprising—that internet could cease to exist. Here’s your chance to preserve a beautiful thing.)

I tried to look up how many presidents have been grandfathers while serving in office. It’s pretty hard to look up because no one in the history of presidents has ever cared about whether or not they have grandchildren or will ever have grandchildren because it is truly one of the dumbest things to care about in the universe.

As if my own personal iMessage problems weren’t enough, take a look at my wife’s iPhone storage. Her phone is close to unusable because her text messages are taking up TEN GIGABYTES of storage! WTF? Corrupt database? Unclearable cache? No clue how this is happening, nor how to clear out the space, etc.

Two months ago I switched from iPhone to Android. I’ve been a huge iOS fan since the first day, but just couldn’t deal with iOS7 (although that’s topic for another post).

I got a Verizon MotoX and couldn’t be happier. I could switch pretty much every app I used and was up and running w/ Android as my primary phone, fully loaded, within 24 hours.

But something really strange happened. I noticed I wasn’t getting text messages from lots of people. I was getting annoyed at them for not responding and they were getting annoyed that I wasn’t responding.

What happened? My work laptop was still configured with Messages.app so all their messages were still sending as iMessage. They were showing up on my work laptop, but not my phone.

This was pretty annoying, but understandable. Monday I went to the office, turned off iMessage, and thought everything would be fine.

Everything is very far from fine.

Here we are 8 weeks later and this is my current situation:

If a friend on iOS (which is 99% of my friends) sends me a message, it first tries to send as iMessage and fails. The more tech savvy folks then get the option to “Resend as Text Message” and it will get through. This is pretty annoying for them, but not catastrophic.

If a friend sends a group message and includes me, it will send as Group iMessage, not Group MMS, and I don’t receive it. And here’s the icing on the cake: it fails silently! They don’t get a “failed” notification. The message is just dropped in the ether. I never get it, and they don’t know that it failed.

Apple has tried very hard to help with this problem. Unfortunately their solution is TELL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS TO DELETE EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE THREAD THAT YOU HAVE EVER BEEN ON.

Let me recap: I no longer have iPhone. My phone number isn’t associated with Apple, iCloud, iMessage, or FaceTime any more. But every single iOS device I have ever messaged in the past 5 years has my phone number cached! Every single phone will only try to message me via iMessage, not SMS. And to make matters worse, it fails SILENTLY!

To add insult to injury, the vast majority of messaging I’ve done in the past 3 years are group messages with pictures of our children. It would be bad enough if *I* had to delete 5 years of messaging history. But to ask my wife, my sister, my best friends, and literally every person I know to delete THEIR message histories? You’ve got to be kidding me!

I feel completely hostage. They have no solution and it’s insane that Apple has my phone number held hostage with no way to get it back.

Notes:

Apple Customer Support has tried very hard to help me, and everyone I’ve interacted with has been fantastic. Super friendly, and for a user who just left iOS for Android at that!

I’ve even had Apple support revoke my certificates so I couldn’t authenticate if I tried!

Apple engineers confirmed there is no record of my number server-side. It’s a client side cache issue on every other person’s handset

And no, changing my phone number of 15 years is not a very good solution.

When I say “I’ve ever experienced”, I mean it. The experience of messages failing silently is awful. For example, my sister messaged me to tell me she was having a baby girl. I had no idea for days, and didn’t even know to congratulate her!

Update:

It’s been about 4 months or so since I switched.

Nothing I was able to do or Apple was able to do fixed the problem. I was able to put Messages into debug mode and I sent Apple a full debug log (Apple bug report #15966535). They marked the ticket as “Duplicate” and I was no longer able to view any updates.

After about 3 months, most of the issue has resolved.

The majority of group-texts work now; iPhones now send the whole thread is MMS not iMessage. It’s still not 100% but pretty good.

Most of my friends can send SMS without failures, but quite a few still get “iMessage failed” and have to “resend as SMS”.

I’ve completely given up trying to fix the problem. Just hoping the remaining iOS devices resolve themselves at some point, or Apple fixes in next update.

<rant>Everyone thinks this is an Android problem that they can’t message me anymore. Really tough to explain to the world that it’s _their_ iPhone that’s buggy.</rant>

Ben leads the Mobile Commons technology team at Upland Software, where he is responsible for product development, system architecture, and technical operations. Prior to Upland, he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mobile Commons.

Ben has 15 years of experience building Internet applications of all shapes and sizes. He spent much of his career building distributed software for B2B customers. With a background in both the financial and medical industries, he has extensive experience with high availability systems with a focus on security and data sensitivity. As a software engineer at Bloomberg LP, Ben developed their trading system, search engine, and web services. After Bloomberg, he worked at ShadowTV, transcoding, indexing and streaming 100s of terabytes of video data for government and corporate customers.

He earned a BS in electrical and biological engineering and a Master's in medical image processing, both at Cornell University. After completing his studies, he took a position as a Visiting Scientist, developing medical software used in clinical trials for lung cancer screening and image analysis tools used in General Electric's CT scanners.

Ben lives on a small urban farm in Brooklyn with his wife Arin and sons Gabriel & Ezekiel. He can usually be found coding, biking, playing basketball or listening to Audible. He is one of the leading pioneers shaping how organizations successfully use mobile communication for advocacy, fundraising, list building, and organizing. He sits on the board of ioby.org and advises nonprofits on effective uses of technology.

Ben leads the Product and Technology teams at Mobile Commons by Upland Software

Apr
2007 -
Dec
2014

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer / Mobile Commons

Ben is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mobile Commons, where he is responsible for product development, system architecture, and technical operations. He is one of the leading pioneers shaping how nonprofit organizations successfully use mobile communication for advocacy, fundraising, list building, and organizing.

As a security and privacy expert, I’m expected to know which companies protect their users’ privacy and which encryption programs the NSA can’t break. The truth is, I have no idea. No one outside the classified government world does. I tell people that they have no choice but to decide whom they trust and to then trust them as a matter of faith. It’s a lousy answer, but until our government starts down the path of regaining our trust, it’s the only thing we can do.

In my experience, telling people to do something hard (open source, keep privacy, etc.) in the face of a barely perceived danger (government is coming to get you) is kind of a hard message to get heard.

Name: Isaac Newton (1642-1727)Writes: RightDominant Cortex: Left University: Cambridge UniversityKey Contributions: ”In Book I of Principia, Newton opened with definitions and the three laws of motion now known as Newton’s laws (laws of inertia, action and reaction, and acceleration proportional to force). Book II presented Newton’s new scientific philosophy which came to replace Cartesianism. Finally, Book III consisted of applications of his dynamics, including an explanation for tides and a theory of lunar motion.”

Susan Crawford, on contentions by AT&T and T-Mobile that local wireless markets are competitive

You should have distinct memories of you or someone under your employ having at least two separate incidents in the last four weeks in which they dropped everything they were doing and immediately took action to resolve these problems.

Last night during the hurricane, we could not telnet to one of our partner’s data centers from our primary data center. We could get there from our workstations and from our backup sites.

A traceroute revealed a router somewhere in Washington DC that was hanging things up between the two data centers.

So my question is, how could this happen? I would have expected all the TCP/IP packets to be rerouted automatically around the malfunctioning router? Isn’t that the way the Internet was designed to work?

Today we’re launching Capture the Flag: Web Edition, a security contest where you can try your hand at discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities in mock web applications. If you’ve ever wondered how a CSRF attack works in practice, this is your chance to find out. We’ve found that hands-on experience with exploiting security flaws helps us write more secure code, and we hope that working on the CTF will be both enlightening and fun.

I’m giving my development team the afternoon off to compete in this!

Look, I love programming. I also believe programming is important … in the right context, for some people. But so are a lot of skills. I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing.

The article is conflating “coding” with “professional software development”. Learning to code teaches you, among lots of other things:

Divide and conquer

Boolean logic

Debugging

Analytical thinking

Logic flow

Details!

When a programmer gets requirements from a product manager or business analyst, they are ALWAYS incomplete. The edge cases are NEVER identified and none of the “what if” scenarios are played out. 9 times out of 10 it is up to the programmer to understand the nuances, to take things to their logical conclusions, to consider what happens in the case of N=0 or as N approaches infinity.

These are all skills I use EVERY SINGLE DAY, not just when I code, but in solving problems in life. Broken toilet? How do I figure out where the problem is? You bet I’m going to divide and conquer that shit (pun intended)!

This kind of thinking helps me in everything that I do in life and it wasn’t until I learned to code (in college, mind you) that I started thinking this way.

Do I want my son to become a computer programmer? I don’t care. Up to him. Do I want him to understand how to think critically and logically and in a structured & methodical way when approaching problems? Absolutely. And computer programming teaches these skills better than anything else I’ve ever done.

Half of New York City’s best and brightest technologists live or work in Brooklyn, yet we travel to Manhattan every week for the best tech talks.

Not anymore! BK Tech Talks are presentations about the most interesting problems and solutions that New Yorkers are working on.

Presentations should be 30-45 minutes long and are for a technical audience. Don’t be afraid to show source code. And if you’re afraid to read code, this Meetup isn’t for you. If you would like to present or there’s something you’d like to hear about, please let us know.

The first few presentations: “MTA BusTime: Real Time GPS Tracking of New York City Buses” and “Bitcoin is Not a Currency” look awesome.

So? What are you waiting for? Come join the Meetup and we’ll see you in Brooklyn!

The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub.

Then, when you open up a second terminal to the same remote server, it will automatically reuse the existing connection and the new prompt will appear almost instantaneously. It doesn’t have to re-authenticate for every new window. Amazing.

If you also add

ControlPersist 4h

then the connection will stay open in the background. Super useful for things like git that re-establishes a connection on every operation. Dropped my `git pull` from 10 seconds on the first run to 2 seconds on the second.

You rent a hotel room. You put a book in the top drawer of the bedside table and go to sleep. You check out the next morning, but “forget” to give back your key. You steal the key!

A week later, you return to the hotel, do not check in, sneak into your old room with your stolen key, and look in the drawer. Your book is still there. Astonishing!

How can that be? Isn’t the contents of a hotel room drawer inaccessible if you haven’t rented the room?

Well, obviously that scenario can happen in the real world no problem. There is no mysterious force that causes your book to disappear when you are no longer authorized to be in the room. Nor is there a mysterious force that prevents you from entering a room with a stolen key.

The hotel management is not required to remove your book. You didn’t make a contract with them that said that if you leave stuff behind, they’ll shred it for you. If you illegally re-enter your room with a stolen key to get it back, the hotel security staff is not required to catch you sneaking in. You didn’t make a contract with them that said “if I try to sneak back into my room later, you are required to stop me.” Rather, you signed a contract with them that said “I promise not to sneak back into my room later”, a contract which you broke.

In this situation anything can happen. The book can be there – you got lucky. Someone else’s book can be there and yours could be in the hotel’s furnace. Someone could be there right when you come in, tearing your book to pieces. The hotel could have removed the table and book entirely and replaced it with a wardrobe. The entire hotel could be just about to be torn down and replaced with a football stadium, and you are going to die in an explosion while you are sneaking around.

You don’t know what is going to happen; when you checked out of the hotel and stole a key to illegaly use later, you gave up the right to live in a predictable, safe world because you chose to break the rules of the system.

C++ is not a safe language. It will cheerfully allow you to break the rules of the system. If you try to do something illegal and foolish like going back into a room you’re not authorized to be in and rummaging through a desk that might not even be there anymore, C++ is not going to stop you. Safer languages than C++ solve this problem by restricting your power – by having much stricter control over keys, for example.

All they did was change account IDs in the URL and voila, they were in someone else’s account. This makes me so sad.

At least they have 2 factor authentication and Site Key and ridiculous password length and content requirements that are incompatible with any of my other password algorithms and auto-logoff because those things aren’t at all annoying and really help protect my info.

Ask ANY developer or project manager if they practice agile development.

90% will say yes.

Now ask if they use scrum, velocity tracking, XP, TDD, FDD, or pair programming. The number will now be closer to 10% (followed quickly by “but we’re still agile”).

The problem is that the opposite of the term “agile” is slow, stodgy, and not able to move quickly. Who wants to be that? No one. It’s a loaded question to begin with.

So when someone says “we do agile development”, it’s important to make the distinction: are you saying your team moves quickly and respond well to changes? If so, that’s great. Good for you. Or are you actually describing your methodology?

I don’t actually hate agile development. I just hate the name.

“It’s Agile with a capital A, baby!”

Related: As funny as the term Extreme Programming is, it completely avoids this problem. If you ask someone if they practice XP, you will get almost no false positives.

Similar: asking someone if they have a zero-tolerance policy for bugs (AKA Joel Test #5: Do you fix bugs before writing new code?) is a similar question. Answering “no” implies that you accept and tolerate bugs, which no one wants to admit, even though they definitely do.

A federal judge in the case has agreed to allow the U.S. Copyright Group to subpoena internet service providers to find out the identity of everybody who had illegally downloaded [The Expendables via bit torrent].

Exceptional tracks errors in Ruby apps. It’s wildly popular. It now processes a few hundred million errors per month for over 10,000 apps—including some very big and popular ones.

So if my math is correct, ~300 million exceptions per month for 10,000 apps works out to about 30,000 exceptions per month, or one thousand exceptions per day per application!

That’s a little terrifying, no?

Sony has a platform for e-books. Amazon has a platform for e-books. Barnes & Noble has a platform for e-books. Apple has a platform for e-books. But Apple is the only one which allows its competitors to have apps on its devices. And Apple is the anti-competitive one?

Text messaging’s versatility in the healthcare industry is underlined by the fact that it often ventures outside its more common role – such as appointment reminders or healthy living tips – to inhabit unique and interesting niches. One such example of this is Sweden’s blood banks, which use text messaging to inform donors when their donation helps save a life. Besides demonstrating text messaging’s versatility, this use case exemplifies how text messaging’s wide reach and speedy delivery makes it the perfect tool for effecting positive change.

How Sweden’s blood banks use text messaging to engage donors

According to a recent study, blood donations are up by 25% in high-income countries, but recruiting new donors while retaining recurring ones has proved to be difficult. In order to respond to this challenge, Sweden’s blood banks have implemented a new text messaging service that alerts donors when their donation helps save a life. The new program hopes that showing donors the impact their donation has made on someone else’s life will motivate them to continue giving.

In order to attract new donors, the program uses social media to broadcast their text message call to action. Karolina Blom Wilburg, communications manager at Stockholm’s blood service, explains that “it’s a great feeling to know you made such a big difference and maybe even saved someone else’s life. We get a lot of visibility in social media and traditional media thanks to SMS. But above all we believe it makes our donors come back to us, and donate again.”

Text messaging for blood donation centers

While Sweden’s use of text messaging is innovative and interesting, the tried-and-true applications of SMS – such as appointment reminders – can also benefit blood banks. A great example of this is Blood Systems, one of the oldest and largest blood service providers in the US. They integrated text messaging into their outreach when they started to see lower response rates from phone and email appointment reminders. Blood Systems found that by using text messaging to have donors confirm or reschedule their appointments, they saw a 57% increase in overall response rates and 28% increase in appointment confirmations! Carol Brugman, Marketing & Communications Specialist at Blood Systems, explained “as more people depend on mobile devices, we need to be at the forefront of changing trends and use whatever communication channel works best for donors.”

Text messaging’s uses can also extend beyond appointment reminders and updates. For example, your blood bank can use text messaging to arrange regular appointments with donors. Start by asking them how frequently they would like to donate. Once they respond, you can use text messaging to coordinate regular appointments at a date and time that is convenient for them. After a person donates, you can send a follow-up text thanking them for their services, or even conduct a survey in order to get feedback on your organization. Text messaging platforms also allow you to message your entire mobile list at the same time, providing an easy and effective way to alert all your donors to low supply levels, special holiday hours, record breaking donation levels, or any other relevant news.

Overall, there are many, many ways that text messaging can be used to engage with people. The healthcare industry is just starting to see some of the exciting results that come about from using it as a communication and engagement tool. If you’re interested in learning how to incorporate text messaging into your healthcare strategy, please contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

This past June, the Supreme Court made a historic ruling in favor of marriage equality. While the decision was celebrated nationwide, it was an especially momentous occasion for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an advocacy group dedicated to fighting for LGBTQ rights. HRC used a combination of text messaging and social media to inform supporters of developments on the ruling and to run a fun crowdsourcing campaign to allow supporters to celebrate the win with the rest of the community.

How HRC used text messaging to build an action network of supporters

HRC knew that the entire country would be watching the Supreme Court make this historic decision, and wanted to use it as an opportunity to both connect with their supporters and spread the word about their organization’s work to others. One core aspect of their strategy was to create a text message campaign specifically designed to keep people in the loop about updates on the Supreme Court’s ruling and LGBTQ equality.

HRC took to social media and email to give them the chance to get an alert as soon as the Court announced its decision. They asked everyone to text the word “MARRIAGE” to 30644 in order to join HRC’s mobile action network and to receive text message notifications on developments in the Supreme Court’s decision. Because most people read a text message seconds after receiving it, HRC was able to both grow its mobile list and offer its supporters a swift and effective channel for receiving the news on the ruling. It also gave them a more personal way to deliver the good news than Twitter, and to engage in an excited conversation with their supporters.

Celebrating marriage equality with over 275,000 supporters

As soon as the ruling was announced, HRC sent out a text message to more than 275,000 supporters notifying them of the historic decision. Almost immediately people started using the hashtags #lovewins and #marriageequality on social media platforms in order to express their joy and solidarity within their community for the occasion. HRC experienced an overwhelming response from the public, with celebrities, politicians, and more, who vocalized their support for the ruling by using the trending hashtags.

HRC didn’t stop there. They also created a crowdsourced photo album by asking users to text in pictures of themselves and/or their loved ones celebrating the moment and posting them on Facebook. Over 3,000 people texted in pictures of themselves and their loved ones!

The album acted as a touching commemoration of the historic moment, while also encouraging supporters to use text messaging to share their love and celebrate with other people all across the country.

By using text messaging and social media together, HRC was able to make their campaign celebrating nationwide marriage equality a huge success. Their efforts accomplished more than just growing their mobile list or notifying their supporters – they helped turn a historically significant event into an engaging experience for all their supporters. Their success exemplifies the power that mobile technology holds for forming communities and bringing them together when the occasion arises.

If you’d like to learn more about how text messaging can work for your organization, please don’t hesitate to contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

According to a report by Agency Healthcare Research and Quality, hospital readmissions cost hospitals over $41.3 billion annually. A pilot program run by Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia recently tested whether using text messaging and email to communicate with patients after their discharge could reduce the rate of readmissions. The program showed positive results and promising implications for mobile messaging as a cost-saving tool in the healthcare industry.

Hahnemann Hospital’s pilot program on using mobile messaging to reduce hospital readmission rates

The objective of the Hahnemann Hospital pilot program was to see whether sending patients mobile messages after their discharge reduced the rate of 30-day readmissions. For ten months, the program tracked the behaviors of 368 congestive heart failure patients and 784 other patients. All discharged patients were given the option of receiving follow up appointment reminders after their discharge via text message, email, or phone call. At the end of ten months, the researchers surveyed the participants in order to find out how they responded to the appointment reminders.

The pilot program had some extremely promising results: researchers found that sending patients mobile reminders resulted in a 10% decrease in hospital readmissions. The baseline readmission rate prior to the pilot was at 26.7%, but this dropped to 16% for those who received reminders. They also found that:

68% of patients who received messages showed up for their follow-up appointment, regardless of whether they confirmed their appointment. This is a 21% increase over patients who did not receive reminders.

5% of patients who confirmed their appointment cancelled their appointment, compared to 11% of patients who did not receive a reminder.

Another important finding of the program is that 63% of readmissions come from one small segment of 8.8% of patients – in other words, a small group of people is responsible for the majority of the cost related to hospital readmissions. Thompson Boyd, physician liaison at Hahnemann Hospital, explained that in order to decrease the accrued cost of hospital readmissions, it is essential to reach these high-risk patients who need higher levels of care and attention than other patients. “Those readmitters need a greater proportion of traditional care complemented with technology,” said Boyd. Since text messaging is proven to be especially effective at reaching demographics where other communication channels fall short, the pilot program’s results strongly suggest that text messaging is the best way to reach these patients and cut back on costs.

How text messaging leads to positive healthcare outcomes

The pilot program is a great example of the positive results that text messaging can wield within the healthcare arena, since more engaged patients have better healthcare outcomes. “Mobile technology has a role to play in readmission reduction and that patients that are more engaged tend to be readmitted less often,” said Boyd. “They keep their appointments more often at higher rates, and cancel less, and also, for those folks, percentage of readmissions was down.”

While many other communication methods fall short, text messaging’s high read rate (99%) ensures that important messages will get noticed. And since a text message reminder can be read at any time, anywhere, it’s a great way to remind patients of important information after their discharge. This is especially true when you compare the efficacy of text messaging to other more passive methods of assistance, including, but not limited to, paper pamphlets, emails, and even phone calls, which are likely to go through to a voicemail inbox that remains unchecked.

For example, a patient may be less likely to mistake a side effect for a symptom if they are properly informed, saving them an unnecessary visit to the emergency room. Text message appointment and medication reminders also help ensure that patients stay on top of the ball for post-discharge care. Using text messaging to communicate with patients is akin to providing them with an on-call, 24/7 personal assistant – for a very small fraction of the cost.

Giving people access to resources via text message makes it more likely that they will use them. If you’re interested in learning more about how to use text messaging for positive healthcare outcomes, please check out more information about the advantages of using SMS in healthcare:

Hahnemann Hospital’s pilot program is just one great example of text messaging’s influence in the healthcare sector. If you’d like to learn more or have any questions, please contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

The following post was written by our friends at Fission Strategy. Stay tuned for more guest posts in the future!

Do you want to increase how many people you can reach? Of course you do! SMS texting is a great way to do it because it’s the most popular form of communication, and the one most likely to be viewed by recipients.

Did you know that the average American sends about 41.5 text messages a day and that SMS campaigns have a 99% clickthrough rate? That is 7x’s that of the average nonprofit email! An SMS campaign may also be best for international campaigns to reach people with limited Internet bandwidth.

Over the past year, Fission Strategy has been working with the Global Teacher Prize, dubbed as the “Nobel Prize of teaching,” to build their online infrastructure and reach out to teachers and communities around the world. The prize invites them to nominate or apply for the $1 million award. In the search for a teacher worthy of such an award, Fission Strategy provides campaign support, website and social content design, and outreach strategy and implementation. To convert nominees to applicants, one central component of this strategy is our mobile texting campaign.

SMS is the way to go!

Why is this an important part of our strategy? Oftentimes SMS is the quickest way to connect with your audience, even more directly than social media. And according to research done by Mobile Commons, texts are also most likely to gain an immediate response when compared to other apps, emails, and voicemail. When looking at international performance, mobile is growing in its use for content sharing at faster rates than social media platforms such as Twitter! In fact, across many different countries, views of Twitter timelines declined while, as Forbes points out, “usage of mobile messaging apps exploded between the end of 2012 and the end of 2013.

As teacher nominations came in from all over the world and in several different languages, we knew that in order to reach all teachers in all regions, we would need to employ a robust mobile component to our outreach strategy. Texting in batches by region of the world allowed us to connect with nominees at the right time of day and reach those with varying levels of Internet access and social media use. We texted nominees for the prize to keep them up to date on application deadlines and answered their questions, so that regardless of their online connectivity status, any teacher would have an opportunity to apply for this prize.

Set up the data for success!

It is important to be sure that your campaign’s mobile phone field in a web form is clear and easily guides people to enter their information correctly (with dashes, spaces, and the number of numbers), especially when you are texting people from different regions of the country or world. Users may enter mobile phone information inconsistently (including misplaced or missing country codes, for example). Our primary method for getting these mobile numbers was through online sign-ups, but getting numbers from in-person events is also effective (in which case you should still specify if you need a country code)!

It is also helpful to segment your audience lists based on language and time zone, ensuring that they receive their texts during the day and with a 160 character message that is easily understood, with a clear call to action. We wrote more about “balancing the right messaging” in our article published in NTEN’s September 2014 issue about Online Messaging Across Geographies.

The result?

What was the result? Through the campaign, the Global Teacher Prize received thousands of nominations and applications — 30% over the original goal and from more than 120 countries — in part because of the success of SMS outreach. In fact, in 2008, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon launched an SMS campaign in order to mobilize the world for world peace. Text messages get opened. Emails often don’t.

Last Year’s Top 10 Finalists Represented 8 Different Countries!

SMS is a great way to include your campaign message into a channel that can reach a wider international audience, but it needs attention to detail! If you have questions, or are interested in taking your campaign to the next level with SMS, or even a new digital strategy, Facebook app, new graphics or a website revamp, we’d be more than happy to help!

Please do nominate an exceptional teacher for the Global Teacher Prize. Nominations and applications for the 2016 prize are now open! You can sign-up to stay in the loop at http://globalteacherprize.com.

Fission Strategy empowers the world’s most remarkable organizations and leaders to create digital campaigns, websites and apps that mobilize large-scale action. We specialize in helping leading nonprofits, foundations and social enterprises tell powerful stories, engage their supporters and use innovation to create social change in their communities and around the globe. Follow us at @fissionstrategy Questions: biz@fissionstrategy.com.

This past June, Mobile Commons was a proud sponsor of the Social Media for Nonprofits Conference that took place in Washington, D.C. Both established and up-and-coming nonprofits attended the conference in order to learn more about mobile technology and text messaging, as well as to engage with other topics and people in the industry. Our very own Sam McKelvie and Jed Alpert spoke at the conference. Mobile Commons was honored at our inclusion in the conference, and was glad that our contribution helped highlight the conference’s emphasis on how text messaging can work for your nonprofit.

How Mobile Commons represented the mobile sector at the Social Media for Nonprofits Conference

Jed Alpert, Co-founder and Managing Director of Mobile Commons had the honor of delivering the opening remarks to those in attendance. He spoke on how influential text messaging is in the nonprofit sector, and provided a great introduction for getting the conversation started about text messaging throughout the conference.

Mobile Common’s Sam McKelvie, Director of Customer Success, also presented at the conference with a session entitled, “OMG SMS FTW! Building Bigger, Better Text Message Campaigns.” Sam’s session was created to help nonprofits at any level think about innovative ways that SMS can advance their organization’s mission and how to overcome common obstacles to growing a mobile program. Her use cases included best practices for engaging supporters, and tactics for using SMS to better reach the populations that your organization serves. Her interactive session gave attendees a chance to develop new ideas for acquiring subscribers and expanding their interaction with their nonprofit.

How SM4NP encouraged users to engage in multi-channel marketing

One of text messaging’s biggest strengths is its ability to integrate with other channels – be it social media or a nonprofit’s web page. Many of the presenters keyed in on this fact by showing attendees how to optimize their other channels by covering topics such as how to design a mobile-friendly web page, how to analyze digital metrics, and the role of social media marketing in the nonprofit sector, including but not limited to, millennial interaction.

Indeed, social media was a big part of the conference, as it allowed people who could not attend to virtually participate via the live tweeting by the attendees and organizing staff. All people had to do was follow the hashtag #SM4NP in order to receive real time events on the conference’s going ons, and to participate with the thought leadership and takeaways present at the conference.

Mobile Commons was honored to be able to participate in the SM4NP conference, and is looking forward to future occurrences. Besides this past conference in Washington, D.C., there are two more approaching. The next will take place in New York City on Tuesday, July 21st, 2015. The last conference will take place in San Francisco on November, 16th, 2015. If you have any questions about Mobile Commons, be it about our work with SM4NP or otherwise, you can always also email us at info@mobilecommons.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Summer is synonymous with fun: outdoor events during the day and into night, with a cold beverage in your hand for all of it. This summer, use text messaging to stay in touch with your community. Here are three ways to grow, engage, and alert your mobile list in order to make sure that they enjoy the summer as much as possible.

Grow your mobile list by offering updates on summertime events

Summer is replete with occasions for celebration: the Fourth of July, barbeques, warm weather, and more. A great way to incentivize people to sign up for your mobile list is to offer people the opportunity to find out about fun events via text message.

To get started, advertise your call to action where your target audience is likely to see it. Public transportation, social media, web forms, and in person events are all great places to start. Your call to action should clearly display your keyword and shortcode (e.g. Text SUMMER to 662266) and let people know what to expect when they subscribe to your mobile list. For example, be specific about the kind of information they will receive, such as alerts for outdoor moving screenings, reminders for upcoming free summer concerts and festivals, or details on local block parties.

You can take your SMS campaign a step further by creating different campaigns for different types of events. For example, the WNYC ran several campaigns to inform New Yorkers of different summer concerts, including the Summer Stage summer series, the Celebrate Brooklyn festival, and a series of classical concerts from WQXR.

Whatever kinds of text messages you choose to send, people will be happy to know that your organization is interested in fostering both a sense of community and ongoing relationship with them.

Engage your mobile list with an automated text message service

Since a text message is 160 characters or less, it’s a great way to share fun or helpful tidbits of information with consumers. Union Privilege, for instance, allows members on its mobile list to text in the name of the beer they are drinking to find out whether it is union made or not.

Other organizations offer location-based databases to inform residents of nearby events or resources. The NYC Department of Health, for example, encourages people to text in their zip code to find the location of the nearest farmer’s markets. Share Our Strength by No Kid Hungry runs a program every year that helps families find free summer meals for their children in their communities.

Automated text message services make it convenient for people to find information no matter where they are or what phone they have. Rather than searching through a long list of locations online or in print, they can send a quick text message and immediately receive the information relevant to their needs.

Alert your mobile list to news in their area

Not everything in life goes according to plan – and at one time or another, your subscribers will undoubtedly encounter obstacles that require a change in their plans. At these times, text messaging is a great tool for notifying your subscribers of these unexpected changes.

The Sierra Club, for instance, has a text messaging program that alerts its users to unhealthy levels of smog that make it dangerous to go outside. The NYC DOH uses text messaging to let people know when to not go to the beach due to water contamination. And some cities use text messaging in their department of transportation to alert drivers to construction related route changes!

No matter the situation, text messaging is a great resource for fielding location based data and turning it around to your mobile subscribers so that they can continue to go about their lives – and you, in turn, can continue offering them the consistent engagement that makes them want to be a part of your organization’s mobile list.

We hope that these three ideas got your wheels turning on the fun things your organization can do with text messaging this summer! If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

Food & Water Watch (FWW) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for common-sense policies to provide access to healthy, safe, and affordable food and drinking water. Recently, FWW launched “Take Back the Tap:” a campaign that aimed to get people to drink tap water from reusable bottles by spreading awareness about the detrimental environmental effects of plastic water bottles. As a part of “Take Back the Tap,” FWW launched a nationwide text messaging college contest for colleges called “Tap-a-palooza.”

How Tap-a-Palooza used text messaging to encourage the use of tap water

Tap-a-palooza was advertised on FWW’s website and on printed media at college campuses throughout the nation. Students could text “I <3 Tap” to 69866 as a way of pledging to carry reusable water bottles and drink tap water instead of buying water bottles. The two colleges with the most pledges would win the contest and receive $1,500 towards public water infrastructure reform, including the installation of hydration stations, retrofitting pre-existing drinking fountains, and/or providing reusable bottles for the winner’s on-campus community. The contest also had additional winning categories, like overall pledge collector, the school with the most pledges, and the school with the highest percentage of pledges. The results were updated weekly, so each college knew where they ranked in comparison to other schools.

Over 60 colleges participated in Tap-a-palooza, and many of the students who pledged took to social media to share their efforts and promote the contest’s shortcode.

The University of Nevada and Dartmouth College emerged as the winners of the grand prize, though the success of the campaign was a win for everyone. Nearly 25 colleges participated, collecting over 3,500 pledges. The numbers project that roughly 770,000 bottles will be saved from waste stream

In addition to raising awareness of how damaging plastic bottled water usage can be, Food & Water Watch saw colleges and universities take action outside of the contest. For example, Humboldt State eliminated 50,000 bottles a year by banning bottled water sales on campus. Many other colleges have created student legislation to ban water on campus, banned water bottles from specific events, and had their campus water fountains replaced/retrofitted to encourage students to opt for reusable water bottles.

Why SMS is the best choice for Take Back the Tap

One of the core values of Food & Water Watch is the small, simplistic actions can create big, meaningful change. Text messaging was a perfect choice for this reason. By sending a quick text to an easy to remember short code, students could easily begin participating in Tap-a-Palooza.

FWW also made a smart move by using text messaging, since it is the de-facto way that college students communicate. Studies show that young adults are 40 times more likely to respond to an SMS call to action than an email one. Text messaging integrated seamlessly with other channels, helping student share the call to action on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels. Some even shared it with their local news channels as seen by The Daily Lobo’s coverage of the University of New Mexico’s efforts.

Takeaways for other non-profits to consider when running a mobile campaign

The success of Tap-a-palooza came from some key factors that are widely applicable to SMS campaigns in general:

Your campaign should be an extension of your identity– Tap-a-palooza was aligned with an important fiber of the Food & Water Watch make up. They take pride in simple actions making a big impact. This easy effort campaign showed that a quick text message could lead to a national firestorm of awareness. While setting up a national system of individualized efforts may seem complex, participants knew what was asked of them with tremendous ease and clarity.

Make it relevant – Rather than try and disseminate an elusive concept nationwide, Food & Water Watch activated smaller, localized communities, and united them with a national movement. By linking together targeted groups with tangible, action-based communication, Food & Water Watch created relevance on many levels.

Educate first, action second – While many people were aware of the harm plastic inflicts on our environment, many of them were unaware of what a large contribution bottled water made specifically. Before people can take actions to prevent the issue, they must first learn the scope of the problem.

Tap-a-palooza served as a successful component of a larger, ongoing campaign and message. The results of not only contest participation were impressive, but in actions taken outside of it. This proves that participants were not only motivated by the grand prize, but were truly inspired to make a difference.

If you have any questions, or would like to get started with a text message campaign, please contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

As 2015 rolls into summer, it brings with it the usual round of interesting text messaging related news. Here, we’ve compiled three recent stories about SMS that caught our eye about how text messaging is impacting our daily lives.

New report finds that people prefer SMS to Facebook Messenger

According to a survey run by RingCentral, text messaging is still the most preferred method of instant communication – even compared to Facebook Messenger, which is currently the most popular mobile instant messaging app. The survey commissioned 509 participants to report their mobile phone habits, and found that 72% of participants said that they prefer SMS to messaging apps. 74% of those participants cited ease of use as text messaging’s main appeal, while another 56% pointed to its speed.

Besides text messaging’s popularity, the survey also suggested that icon overflow – the phenomenon in which too many mobile apps on a person’s smartphone ends up hindering its efficacy instead of promoting it – is still a growing trend. 42% of survey participants reported that they sometimes felt “communications overload” when having to use multiple apps to check messages every day, while 22% offered a resounding “yes” to the question.

Text message therapy continues to rise in popularity

Previously, we’ve written about how text messaging is revolutionizing the traditional therapist’s office by bringing it directly to your mobile phone at a fraction of the cost. Talkspace, for example, is one of the most popular new text messaging therapy services and charges just $25 a week – a far cry from the average cost of most therapists, whose rates can skyrocket into triple digits for a one hour session.

A new article by the Denver Channel points out that text message therapy is continuing to prove itself as a major contender for providing accessible and affordable mental healthcare. The article highlights a study that found that 67% of healthcare professionals are either already using a form of telemedicine, or plan to do so within a few years. Oren Frank, founder of TalkSpace, describes how a big part of text messaging’s efficacy as a communication channel between therapist and patient is that writing out text messages eliminates certain obstacles in face-to-face therapy. “The first six months you go through face-to-face therapy, you’re busy lying to your therapist, crafting a beautiful persona that you want the therapist to think you’re this great guy,” he says. “That [process] seems to be removed very efficiently and quickly when you do it in writing.”

While text messaging therapy services for adults is fairly new, text messaging as a means of offering mental health support – and saving lives in the process – is not.

DoSomething.org has seen extraordinary results from their work with Crisis Text Line, a 24/7 anonymous SMS hotline which allows teenagers to safely and anonymously text in to receive emotional support from trained counselors. In a day and age where people are both continually on the go with their mobile phones in tow, it’s great to see how text messaging can create opportunities for improved health.

Texas residents can now text in anonymous drug tips to the D.E.A.

A new text messaging program called “Tip 411” allows Texas residents to anonymously report illicit drug activity to the D.E.A. Anyone who wishes to report drug activity – or wants to report an incident they witnessed that may have possibly involved drug activity – can simply text “RGV” to “TIP 411.” Doing so subscribes the witness to the program, after which the witness can choose to include a picture and/or short written description of the incident. The message is then anonymously delivered to an agent who can take the appropriate required action.

D.E.A. Assistant Special Agent Steve Jenkins hopes that younger people in the community will use the program. “It’s a way if the person is not comfortable with providing us the information….[that] they can give it to us this way,” says Jenkins.

The program takes advantage of two of text messaging’s main features: first, its popularity among young people (who are the program’s target audience), and second, its ability for individuals to provide both full disclosure while also remaining wholly anonymous. Both of these factors should lead to good results for the program.

Thanks for reading this month’s edition of SMS Nation! We hope that you found the stories interesting, inspiring, or some combination of the two. If you have any questions about how text messaging can help your organization, please contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

Mobile Commons is proud to announce that our platform now supports both the universal ASCII and the GSM language character sets. Simply speaking, this means that text messages sent from the Mobile Commons platform can now include special characters such as the umlaut (ü), and the enye (ñ), and other diacritical marks. This new feature is available to all our customers, and allows them to more accurately message their subscribers in other languages besides English.

How to add special characters to your text messages in the Mobile Commons Platform

Customers who wish to send a text message that includes special characters can type out the message the same way that they would any other message on the Mobile Commons platform. The message, special characters included, will broadcast to subscribers as usual.

However, customers should take note of the fact that using special characters will reduce the amount of characters that they can send per text message. Usually, a text message is limited to 160 characters. When you insert a special language character such as the umlaut or enye, it takes more data for the character to be sent correctly. Therefore, any text message that contains a special character will be limited to 70 characters per message. Mobile Commons accommodates for this change by noting the new character limit to the lower right of the text box.

For example, here is a screenshot of a sample Spanish language campaign in Mobile Commons that shows the original message as having 134 characters left. However, as soon as a special character is inserted, that number drops to 34.

To bring the character count back up to 160, simply delete the special characters and the original character count will be restored.

Customers should also be aware that while most mobile phones support the usage of special characters, there are some exceptions with older feature phones, which may have trouble displaying them in the correct format.

Mobile Commons is happy that we can offer our customers a more sophisticated use of text messaging technology, and are excited to see what our customers do with this new feature. If you have any questions about the Mobile Commons platform, reach out to your mobile strategist or contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.

This past March, nonprofit organizations and technology companies across the country converged at the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTEN) to learn more about the latest updates in nonprofit tech. Mobile Commons was excited to be a part of the conference, and we wanted to apply the lessons we learned specifically to SMS for nonprofits and share them with you. Here are our three biggest takeaways from NTEN on what every nonprofit should know about text messaging.

Takeaway #1: Every supporter should be a mobile subscriber

Organizations often see supporters trickling in from several different campaigns – email, social, mobile, etc. The truth is, however, that supporters see themselves as one donor connected to many organizations. That’s why it’s crucial to make sure that all your subscribers are mobile subscribers, since mobile is by far and away the most accessible communication channel. Because text messages have over a 99% read rate, they reach supporters at the right time with the right message, thereby giving you an opportunity to direct them to other resources and channels.

Connecting with supporters over multiple channels – social media, physical mailing lists, etc. – is a great way to move them up your ladder of engagement. But what’s important to remember is that text messaging doesn’t just pile on top of your existing communication channels: SMS should integrate with all of them, so that your Facebook posts include a text message call to action, your printed collateral includes a text message call to action, and so on. In that sense, text messaging works for your organization by tying all of your existing channels together. It creates a central channel for supporters to receive information about your organization, from general news and updates to specific action-driven campaigns.

Since you want to everyone to be a mobile subscriber, you will need to advertise your call to action wherever you can. As you’re creating your promotional materials, here are two things you should consider.

The first is that you should strive to understand your core audiences. This translates into understanding their differences. What is going to appeal to an 18 year old college student is different than what will appeal to a 35 year city dweller. Create different calls to action that target your users according to their age, demographic, etc., then market them accordingly. United We Dream, for instance, created a text message call to action for a Mother’s Day Campaign that used a heartwarming photo of a Latina mother and daughter that would catch the eye of Latino families interested in supporting immigration reform.

Secondly, you should A/B test different copy for your calls to action when you’re only targeting one demographic. Test run a few different calls to action with different copy or design in order to see what your users respond best to. DoSomething.org, for instance, created several different campaigns for their “Bully Text: Superstar Edition” text message multiplayer game. They used the same spokesperson – Seamus – in different costumes and scenarios in order to promote the campaign.

Once you get people to subscribe to your text messaging campaigns, you can start targeting them to drive action and engagement. In the same way that you used varied content in order to widen your reach, you can use segmentation and personalization to zero your focus in on your target audiences to make your outreach more customized and therefore, more effective.

In order to run targeted campaigns, you’ll first want to collect information on your users. Ask them questions about what issues they’re interested in so that you can alert them to events that involve those issues. Sierra Club, for instance, used text messaging to poll its mobile list in order to find members who might be interested in installing solar panels in their homes.

Your nonprofit can also take note of where your members live so you can message them every time there is an event in their area. Define American ran a very successful campaign that used text messaging to find and recruit supporters to host local watch parties for the CNN premiere of a documentary. Your organization can, in short, turn every event into an opportunity to get your supporters involved.

These are just a few examples of ways that you can stay connected with your supporters in order to make them dedicated to your organization’s goals. There are many ways to engage your supporters, and a lot of resources out there in order to help you make the right steps. If you’d like to learn more, please check out some of our other blog posts:

15NTC was an exciting opportunity for nonprofits and tech companies alike to learn more about what they’re doing in their respective fields, and how they can work together to achieve better results. We’re excited to see what nonprofits will accomplish with text messaging this year by incorporating these takeaways into their campaigns!

If you have any questions about text messaging’s involvement with the nonprofit sector, please contact us at sales@mobilecommons.com.